HB 997 was a poor bill at best. Sorry, Phelps tried to be accomodating and it still wasn't enough for Madigan's boys. Now Phelps is trying to tweak his bill with ideas like upping the permit fee to $100 and more hours of training. It is true, Illinois is a god awful state.

The original 997 was a good bill. The revamped version that came up last night is the one you are referring to GTX63 and I agree it wasn't the best. But still it's better than some messed up court carry with FOID card without pre-emption. I would rather have a carry license that works throughout the entire state of Illinois.

The Illinois Republicans can iniate nothing in everyday politics that Madigan or the Dems do not put their ok on. Been like that here for a long time and it will stay that way. A judge has put the mandate out on this gun issue; they Dems can say no and the Republicans can say no, and then CCW becomes the standard. Phelps bent and then bent some more, and honestly, he had to do neither. Putting more fees and costs on concealed carry is a poll tax and go against the poor and middle class. In this case, all they have to do is play defense and vote down the baloney bills that come up, until a reasonable agreement can be made. What has been put forth so far isn't reasonable or even close to what our neighboring states have.

Which means a lot of cities will just make laws prohibiting concealed carry. Chicago and most all of cook county would make it illegal.. no good!

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Constitutional Carry pre-empts home rule. Local communities cannot out law
CCW, that is a misconception the anti's are pushing. They will still put them
on the books and then each one has to be challenged in court. Massive
waste of tax payer money but our IL criminals... politicians are the best at
that.

I certainly hope that the CCW goes through in Illinois. I have a lot of friends back there that are anxious to get theirs. As far as Chicago goes, crime won't be affected for the most part, maybe some deterrent for street holduups or car jackings...but let's face it over 90% of the gun crimes are committed by repeat offenders. They already have guns and are shooting at each other. But let me take a page from our liberal leaders. "If it saves just one life". And that it will most assuredly do. Chicago crime has never been about guns, it's about politicians whith their thumbs up their a$$e$ trying to blame everyone and everything but themselves for how poorly they enforce, prosecute and jail the bad guys. And Illinois state police has always been for citizens protecting themselves with firearms. They have had that opinion published over and over. They would much rather pull up to a crime scene with the homeowner standing over a dead or wounded criminal than be the ones to notify the next of kin of some poor unarmed victim.